The Largest U.S. Banks Have Repeatedly Gone Bankrupt Due to Wild Speculation. The Fed Blessed the Speculation then Helped Cover Up the Bankruptcies

As I have previously pointed out, the New York Times wrote in February:

In the 1980s, during the height of the Latin American debt crisis, the total risk to the nine money-center banks in New York was estimated at more than three times the capital of those banks. The regulators, analysts say, did not force the banks to value those loans at the fire-sale prices of the moment, helping to avert a disaster in the banking system.

In other words, the nine biggest banks were all insolvent in the 1980s.

Richard C. Koo – former economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and doctoral fellow with the Fed’s Board of Governors, and now chief economist for Nomura – confirmed last year in a speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies that most of the giant money center banks were insolvent in the 1980s.

Specifically, Koo said:

After the Latin American crisis hit in 1982, the New York Fed concluded that 7 out of 8 money center banks were actually “underwater”

All the foreign banks (especially the Japanese banks) had to keep their lending facilities open to American banks so the American banking system didn’t collapse overtly and out in the open

The Fed knew that virtually all of the American banks were “bankrupt”, but could not publicly discuss how bad the situation was. If went out and said the “American banks are bankrupt”, the next day they will go overtly go bankrupt. So the Fed had to come up with a lot of stories like “its good debt on their books”

Then-chairman Volcker instructed the banks to keep lending to the Mexican dictator so that the Mexican economy didn’t totally collapse, because – if Mexico collapsed – it would become obvious that all of the U.S. banks were underwater, and they would immediately collapse

It took 13 years to manage the crisis (at another point in the talk, Koo says 15 years).The way that Volcker approached the problem was that he allowed U.S. banks to keep their lending rates relatively high, while the central bank brought short-term rates down. The spread between the two (the “fat spread”) became revenue for the banks, and the banks used the high fat spread to gradually write off problem loans and to repair their balance sheets.

Volcker’s covert rescue of the American banks using secrecy and a high fat spread didn’t cost U.S. taxpayers a cent

Koo points out that you can’t use the fat spread approach where there are no borrowers

Lessons for Today

So what is the take-home message from all of this? What are the lessons for today?

Well, initially, it shows that it wasn’t just some S&Ls, or a Long Term Capital Management or two.

Virtually all of the largest U.S. banks gamble and speculate and then all go bankrupt. The money center banks gambled in Latin America and lost. They went bankrupt.

Moreover, it wasn’t just the 1980s. As the New York Times wrote in a separate article:

Over the past 80 years, the United States government has engineered not one, not two, not three, but at least four rescues of the institution now known as Citigroup.

Have they changed their behavior?

No. They have – with the Fed’s blessing – simply changed casinos, and for the last decade or so, have put all of their chips into CDOs, CDS, and other leveraged and securitized bets built like a house of cards on top of subprimes and option arms and alt-as and whatnot. Now they’ve lost and gone bankrupt again.

And the Fed playbook obviously includes pretending banks are solvent when they are not.

The Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve lied to the American public last fall when they said that the first nine banks to receive government bailout funds were healthy, a government watchdog states in a new report released today.

The Fed (as well as Treasury and other agencies), have cost the American taxpayer quite a few cents this time around – trillions of dollars. So the Fed’s approach to the current and the Latin American crises are completely different.

The fat spread approach can’t work now, because there has been a secular shift in borrowing habits by Americans. the reduction in American consumer spending is a long-term trend. For example, Alix Partners finds:

While American industry is struggling to get through what could become the worst recession since the Great Depression, Americans say that even after the recession ends, their spending will return to just 86% of pre-recession levels, which would take a trillion dollars per year out of the U.S. economy for years to come. According to this in-depth survey of more than 5,000 people, Americans plan to save (and therefore not spend) an astounding 14% of their total earnings post-recession, with the replenishment of their 401(k) and other retirement savings leading the way among their biggest long-term concern.

“There will be a fundamental shift in the kind of cars we buy, a fundamental shift in the homes we buy, and a fundamental shift in consumption generally,” says Matt Murray, an economist at the University of Tennessee. “And that is not something that took place in the 1980s.”

People are hunkering down, like they did for decades after the Great Depression, and no approach which relies on Americans increasing their debt load will work. See this.

Moreover, as I have repeatedly argued, Summers, Geithner and Bernanke’s entire plan seems to be to restart the great leverage machines, but that this plan is doomed to failure.

Specifically, I have argued for months that the boys believe that if they can just re-start the shadow banking system and lever the economy back up, that all boats will be lifted, asset prices will rise (and the “toxic assets will regain their “true” higher value), and the whole economy will be afloat once again, so that we can go merrily sailing onto paradise.

Isn’t that like trying to re-start a car after the engine has been removed?

And if those who claim that we are in Minsky moment of crushing debt overhang are right (and everyone – from Federal Reserve governors to Nobel prize winning economists – are dusting off their history books and studying Minsky right now), re-levering simply won’t work.

Finally, the big banks are much bigger than they were in 1982. See this and this. What may have worked for 1982-sized banks won’t necessary work for the current behemoths.

Addiction is no joke. It is real. Gambling banks are seriously addicted.What do addicts do to their families, employees, businesses, and their nation? Hurt them badly.Get it? The must go to jail, and receive serious and prolonged rehabilitation from jail.

I think a lot of people are mistaken when they try and convince us -they- know what's going on. Their faulty presumption is that anyone can know what's going on.Once one gets over -that- hurdle, all the altruist-bullshit, the King Kong outrage, the mindless holier-than-thou-humanitarian attitudes fade into insignificance for anyone's cogent understanding -or- their easy acceptance of the false notion -someone else they wrongly admire -and- far too much- has a good handle on the problem.It's just ain't true. This is fresh ground. It's fresh ground every day when you wake up in this reality, folks. So get comfortable with the idea of it.No one has been here before, regardless their citing of history or some mindless accountant's version of -the- statistics.The point is, we're still in the game. The fat lady hasn't sung -yet- and she's not even warming up.When we look around the global landscape, there's really not much choice about letting the sun come up tomorrow on the British Empire.Let me toss out a different view. Indulge me.Remember way-back-when Hong Kong went back to the Red Chinese? Does anyone remember the dire predictions about the Red menace gobbling up capitalist Hong Kong?It didn't happen, did it?In fact, exactly the opposite happened. Hong Kong has gobbled up the Red menace, -entirely.Is there really anything wrong with this picture? I don't -think so.There's a quaint old saying, that -the sun never sets on the British Empire.And while the world continues to spin on its axis, very little remains unchanged, and certainly we're seeing plenty of that lately, it's still also true that -the sun still never sets on the British Empire.Does anyone have any good comprehension about just how long that's been going on?The blogosphere is taking its reactionary queues from the mainstream media so predictably, it has become just another tool of all these many descendant-empires of the British, and all their empirical allies.Capitalism ain't fading, and it ain't gonna fade either.No one is going to jail. No one is going to jail -unless- the Bolsheviks or the Maoists come marching into town.And -no one- is seriously considering arming any socialist factions to sweep down from the countryside and put all these capitalist pigs on trial.You can get over that fantasy right now.There is a silly, altruist outrage that all these large banks have gone reckless in their conduct.They are merely following a well-worn historic trend in pragmatic capitalist adaption.The Treasury and the Fed have a long history of keeping insolvent banks afloat.It's even true that quarterly -when the country's companies pay their taxes to the Treasury- this quite literally bankrupts every bank in the country due to the demand for a transfer of cash, which the none of the banks have on hand.No one panics. The Treasury always sends them all enough cash back -to keep them afloat.There are two things to remember.1) The way the geniuses set up economics, it ain't intuitive. And 2) this game is never ending.Those clowns who publish these newsletters and websites about the dollar going worthless and gold going to a million dollars an ounce can only be right if -the game- ends.Things is awful screwed-up right now. But the game ain't gonna end. You can get over that fantasy, right now.

blindman

games are like life but life is not a game, it is the truth
that games mimic. there is a difference of uncertain
significance. mmv.

But, isn't the plan exactly the same as the 80s, just with government leverage instead of private leverage?As you point out, the money center banks increased private lending at good spreads in order to paper over their losses in Latin America.How is that not what they're doing now, just with the government in the place of private borrowers? Right now, look at Europe, the major European banks are borrowing and buying insane amounts of European government bonds to keep Europe afloat. Essentially Spanish banks are the best example of this since the Spanish government is running such large deficits.I don't see how this game isn't the same for the US as it was before, they're borrowing cheaply from the Federal Reserve Discount Window and then turning around and plowing that money into US Government Debt to game the spreads.

It makes me wonder how much wealth was extracted from American citizens in order to pay down the bankers’ toxic assets in the 1980’s. Perhaps more businesses would have expanded and more people would have hired in the Reagan era but for the fat spread interest rate policy. The fat spread definietly hurt the manufacturing sectors by overvaluing the US dollar(thus making imported goods cheaper) , and upping the hurdle rate for longterm capital projects.

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